To my dismay, the light blue color of my navigation bar caused an audit warning of “Text elements should have a reasonable contrast ratio”. This would not be good if a potential client over the age of 40 with presbyopia were trying to hire me – so I researched how to fix the issue.

Which is better, this or that?

For my site contrast issue, I found the WebAIM color contrast checker tool invaluable. I sampled colors from my header image (cerulean was the winner) and darkened them until the contrast checker tool passed the combination of the new color with the navigation white text.

To my delight the improved contrast makes my design bolder and readable. For any future designs, I’ll be sure I conduct this audit early in the process.